


The Fire and the Flood

by LogicIsGod327



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Forced Suicide, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, M/M, RIP literally everyone, Sphinx (Mythological Creature), The Nemeton sucks, damn tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogicIsGod327/pseuds/LogicIsGod327
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without anyone left, Stiles makes a cross country road trip to the last person he can think of: Derek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fire and the Flood

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quickie I wrote down as a distraction from a major AU I'm writing that ISN'T SCI FI! Go me! Title from the Vance Joy song I listened to on repeat writing this.

He'd stayed as long as he could bear, but, in the end, Stiles couldn't do it. He couldn't stay in that pit of death and pain any longer. Scott was gone, Kira was gone, Liam, Mason, Melissa, Deaton, even Jordan. All he had left was his father, and even that wasn't enough. Lydia had left months prior, moving to a relative's in Oregon, with plans to attend MIT.    
  
The Nemeton had done everything it could to kill them, and it finally succeeded. The black magic stored in the ancient stump unleashed a hellish plague of creatures that, one by one, picked off their pack. All they found of Jordan was a smear. Mason and Liam were gutted like fish. Kira was cut in two, Melissa was chased off of the roof of the hospital, and Scott, the creature, a Sphinx, gave him a riddle. The Sphinx transfixed them all, weaving powerful spells that left them unable to move against it. Unfortunately for Scott, the riddle wasn't the damn one from Oedipus, no, it was a terrible riddle that not even Lydia could solve. Naturally, when Scott failed, the Sphinx killed him, but it was the way in which it killed him. The gun that Scott had taken to carrying, loaded with wolfsbane bullets, was in his hand, and he fought as hard as he could, begged for mercy, but nothing could stop him as the monster forced him to put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Only moments later did Deaton show up with a crossbow and the element of surprise to kill the thing.   
  
To soothe the wrath of the Nemeton took Deaton cutting out his own heart, or risk exposing the secret world of the supernatural. In a week, it all fell apart. After Deaton died and the Nemeton was once more bound, Stiles just retreated. He gave up on everything, stopped playing video games, stopped doing research, just finished off Senior year and polished up his college resumés. John tried negotiating with his son, begging him to stay, but there was no point to it. Stiles was leaving, leaving and never coming back. He promised to keep in touch, and made his dad promise to come out and visit him, wherever he wound up.    
  
At first, Stiles thought about Paris, about Chris and Isaac. They were okay, they'd somehow managed to make it back in time for the funerals, in fact. He then realized they still were working through their own grief of Allison and now Scott, and that he was a bitter reminder of what had happened. He decided against Paris. Then, as much as it pained him, he considered London and seeing Jackson. On petty principle alone, he rejected the notion. There was only one real option left.    
  
Derek. The man had gone back to the empty Manhattan brownstone, and he had only once checked back in. A text message, reading 'Safe. -DH' had arrived in his inbox one morning, about five after Derek and his Camaro had disappeared from Beacon Hills. Stiles hadn't responded, but he made sure to look at the text message from time to time, knowing that if that assurance was ever undone, he'd receive another text. It didn't matter if Derek were seconds from death, he'd text Stiles to make sure he knew he was well and truly gone.    
  
He'd packed all his worldly possessions he could carry into Roscoe, and prepared to drive towards New York. He made his way from Beacon Hills to Vegas, spending the night at a cheap motel off the strip, before again driving into Cañon City, Colorado. There, he found an AirBnB for a night, and stocked up on Little Debbie snack cakes. With as much pain as he existed in, Stiles still needed junk food.    
  
It was a warm June twilight that he rolled into St. Louis. Stiles went to the top of the Arch and took a picture, sending it back to his father, making sure to smile as wide as he could to showcase that he was, in fact, alright. It was all a lie, though. He wasn't okay. The image of Scott's brains on the sidewalk, the feeling of hot blood spattering on his face, it didn't leave him. How could it? How could Lydia's screech as Scott was forced to void his head all over the ground ever leave him? How could John's tears at the sight of a boy he'd seen almost every day since the age of four leave Stiles? How could watching Scott's dad stare without purpose at the grave where his ex-wife and son were now buried leave him?   
  
He crashed in Roscoe that night, and, in the morning, filled him up and prepared to cross the Mississippi. Amazingly, when he reached the halfway mark of the bridge that spanned two halves a continent, he found himself feeling incrementally lighter. Some of the grief was trapped by some barrier, keeping it locked away on the west banks of the wide river.    
  
He stopped in Philadelphia, saw the Liberty Bell, and went on his way further. He suffered the infinite horror of New Jersey and its terrible drivers, and, just like that, he was paused in a park, peering across the Hudson at the wide expanse of the Manhattan skyline. Stiles couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only feel. Derek was so close, was somewhere on that island. When he came back to himself, it was to find that the grief had bubbled up into an ugly sob that ripped through his body. He let more come, crying into his arms as he rest his head on the steering wheel of the Jeep. A good half an hour later, he finally resolved to continue on.    
  
The return address on the only letter was for a midtown brownstone, which Stiles desperately hoped Derek still inhabited. When he reached the row of houses, his heart leaped into his throat at the sight of Derek's Camaro, parked out in front of the proper house. It took him a few moments to find proper parking, and Stiles finally walked his way up to the stoop, and stood, hesitant. He wanted to knock, he did so very badly. Maybe he'd find Derek with some woman warming his bed, or, worse yet, a man. To know that he could have been with the older wolf if he'd only stepped up and offered might just have been to much for the young man.    
  
As Stiles raised his fist to knock with a final deep breath, the chocolate brown door violently swung open, to reveal Derek Hale, looking at Stiles with a thousand emotions in his face, and the other man couldn't determine a single one. Wordlessly, Derek pulled him into a tight, desperate hug, pressing his nose into Stiles' hair and taking a long, deep breath, relishing his rainwater and sugar scent.    
  
"How did you know?" Stiles choked out.    
  
Derek's voice was mocking, even bordering upon tears. "I can recognize the sound of your piece of shit Jeep anywhere."   
  
Crying, Stiles fired back. "Don't be mean to Roscoe. He's a good Jeep. He got me here."    
  
"I was worried he wasn't gonna be up to the task."    
  
Confused, Stiles looks up to Derek. "How'd you know I was coming?"   
  
"Your dad. He told me everything."   
  
Stiles stared at Derek, his mouth hanging open like his jaw was broken, before more tears swelled in his eyes. And there it was. Warm lips pressed to his own. Someone made a desperate groan, someone else slipped their tongue into the other's mouth. Standing there, in Derek's foyer, the door wide open, they kissed like they were dying. And in a way, they were. The old vestiges of Beacon Hills slipped off, they had a new chance to know each other.    
  
A time later, under the cover of Derek's blankets, Stiles looked to his lover. "What did he tell you?"   
  
"Everything." Derek said, simply.    
  
"I know you didn't always see eye-to-eye, but Scott cared about you, a lot. He wanted to talk to you, convince you to come home, but I told him not to."    
  
It was Derek's turn to stare in confusion at the younger man.    
  
"I wanted you there, more than anything, but it hurt too much. It wasn't good for you there."    
  
It took Derek by shock. Stiles was a considerate person, true, but he was also selfish sometimes, especially with people. If Derek were honest, no matter how horrible Beacon Hills was, if Stiles had asked him to stay, he would have, without question. And Stiles knew it, he had to have. One word, and Derek would have stayed, if only for him.    
  
His reverie was broken by the sound of a door slamming. Stiles jumped up, eyes wide, and reflexively reached for the baseball bat he'd kept under his bed, but it was still packed in Roscoe.    
  
"Relax, it's just Cora." Derek assured him.    
  
"Cora as in your sister Cora? I thought she was back in Brazil?"    
  
Derek grinned wistfully. "I went down there for a while, ran afoul of some interesting villagers, almost got sacrificed to the Gods, and managed to convince her to come back with me."    
  
Stiles snorted. "You are  _ so _ telling me that story, ASAP. I suppose we should get dressed, go say hi."    
  
"I suppose so."   
  
Downstairs, Cora sat in the living room, watching the news. As the two men came down the stairs, she turned, a small smile on her face as she rose to greet them.    
  
"Hi, Stiles." She said, pulling him into a hug.    
  
"Cora, you look good." Stiles replied, giving her a wink.    
  
She rolled her eyes. "You say as my brother's stink coats you like a second skin."    
  
"Hey, it's not a stink!" Derek objected, offended.   
  
"Fine. My brother's  _ musk _ . Better, Der Bear?"    
  
His ears flared grew red in embarrassment, even as he nodded.    
  
That night, a Cheshire moon grinned over Manhattan, and the three sat on the roof, listening to the sounds of traffic and tracing constellations. There was talk, of meaningful things, life, death, the nature of good and evil, but also of meaningless things. Kinky aliens, Donald Trump's fake ass hair, even the dumbest possible memes any of them knew. For a brief moment, the grief, the loss, all the evil, evaporated under that smiling moon.    
  
Whatever came next, they would deal with it together, because, in truth, they were all they truly had in the world. The survivors of all that had happened, and they vowed, on the roof of a brownstone in the beating heart of the world, that they would survive whatever came next.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews keep me sane. Well, not really. But they do help! Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
